Hello, everyone!

It's been a while since I last wrote a proper DevLog, and I know people have been asking for news. I have some news to share today, but first I'd like to provide a bit of an explanation for our relative silence. Some transparency is warranted here.

In short, since the end of 2023 I've been struggling a lot with a series of very difficult personal situations, mainly involving my family's health.  To name a few, in just a few months my father was diagnosed with a rapidly-growing cancer, a rare heart condition and, more recently, a burst appendix that landed him in the ICU. I'm his main pillar of support and, more often than not, I was the one at his side helping him through the worst of it. At the same time I was moving to a new place and busy overseeing the construction work while juggling other personal issues.

Things have been very difficult lately, which makes for a very nonconstructive writing environment. But they are fine now — my father's cancer is treated with no signs of returning, doctors believe his heart condition is under control and he's making a recovery post-appendectomy. In relation to the other issues I went through, it's all looking better too.

Since a little more than a month, I've returned to game development and it's been full steam ahead. We're making great strides on all our projects, on all accounts very close to sharing substantive news. Coming up soon we will show what we have in store for Sex Drive (we are just waiting for some nice assets to be ready) and a little after that we'll have news about Minotaur Hotel's Chapter 20. Needless to say, Devil's Gambit is going well, thanks to Alpha's and Roddo's persistence and hard work.

Today, though, what I have to share is a bit unorthodox. It's a little something we had kept under wraps and we can finally talk about it.

"All Over Me Jam"

Last year, I got together with some game developer buddies and we started talking about organizing a little game jam just among ourselves. We had an interesting mix of talents and plenty of creativity to spare, so getting people together for a bold but short project was a very enticing prospect. I settled on the role of organizer and started preparations.

We decided development would last a month, longer than most jams, and I set out to pick a theme that would push everyone out of their comfort zones. Since visual novel development was rather common as a background, I settled on replayability as the core of the experiment. Or, to be more precise, the full theme was...

"It's simple, it's queer, it's replayable." 

For visual novel developers, replayability is a bit of a challenge. Not an insurmountable one, mind you — there are ways to make a story worth a second reading. To give one example, a writer can create a plot that is recontextualized after the reader first experiences it, so that the second playthrough feels like a very fresh experience even if the text is the same. That said, replayability does create a push towards a more mechanics-based production. A tight, engaging gameplay loop leads more easily towards multiple playthroughs, doesn't it?

At the same, by including queerness as a mandatory element, it also creates a counter-weight to a purely mechanics-based approach. Roughly speaking, you can either approach queerness on the level of mechanics (which is quite a challenge!), or you can do it via the aesthetics or narrative. No matter which way is chosen, it would be a nice challenge that would demand some creative problem-solving.

And, last but not least, simplicity was there as an anchor. It would push the games towards being easier to understand by players, and towards more feasible implementations by developers.

Today, I am very excited to share with everyone the ultimate result of the jam: Claw on Claw! I'll let the team explain it for you.

Claw on Claw!

Claw On Claw is a hybrid visual novel/claw machine simulator. You play the role of Soba, a Chinese crocodile lizard and all-around claw game fiend. The game focuses around date nights with Soba's boyfriend, Graham, all of which seem to end up at the arcade!
Win different prizes to change how the night unfolds. Try to grab them all! Get to know Graham and Soba over many dates and see where their relationship goes!
This is a game jam entry, created for the first annual All Over Me Jam, so note that some elements may be rough or missing. The game is fully playable start to finish, so you've got nothing to lose. Check it out!

Claw on Claw was made by an incredible team, whose works you may already be acquainted with:

• Max, the programmer behind Strange Flesh,
• Alpha0, who you probably know from Devil's Gambit,
• PastryGlaze, the creator of Haunted Brothel,
• Douglas Kim,  whose comics are too numerous to list,
• and MechDrago, a game designer currently working on a tabletop game.

Speaking as the game jam's host, Claw on Claw is an incredible realization of the "It's simple, it's queer, it's replayable" idea.

The central mechanic of the claw machine is immediately understandable and engaging — in other words, simple. There's the excitement at the prospect of winning a big prize, the tactical choice of which one to go for, the tension as the claw makes contact with the prize, the edge-of-your-seat experience as it slowly moves the prize to the chute. It's so simple, and so powerful! Everyone knows what claw machines are about and, most importantly, I imagine we all want to win on one.

The replayable element is, of course, closely tied to that. You only have so many credits in a given night and the machine only has so many prizes — you might get all the big ones if you're skillful, but more likely than not you'll leave at least a few behind because you couldn't get them all. The mechanics do the talking here, I think; you may be the one controlling the claw, but the machine is the one grabbing you for another attempt.

And from there comes the queer aspect, with the narrative played out across multiple nights. You'll watch Soba's and Graham's story unfolding, playing a role in it. That alone, by the way, is an interesting approach on its own right — there's a certain element of non-linearity there.

I fully intend on writing an in-depth breakdown of things — the full context behind the theme choice, the thought process for the month-long duration, and of course what lessons I learned as an organizer. For now, though, I want the spotlight to shine on Claw on Claw, so it will have to wait. Please do check it out, it's fantastic.

It's too early to speak of any details, but I do want to retry this experiment next year as an open, public game jam. We'll probably go for a shorter length, but I fully intend on picking another carefully challenging theme — something designed to surgically push developers out of their comfort zone.

Stay tuned! I hope to soon bring good, exciting news about Sex Drive and Minotaur Hotel, alongside with an in-depth look at All Over Me Jam. For now, enjoy Claw on Claw!